


The Ent Wives are Lost

by amoama



Category: Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Feminist Themes, Gen, Motherhood, Trees
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-28
Updated: 2012-02-28
Packaged: 2017-10-31 21:13:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 338
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/348422
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amoama/pseuds/amoama
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>All they know of you is that you are missing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Ent Wives are Lost

To the Wives:

_All they know of you is that you are missing.  
The shape of the space left behind.  
The only remembrance is the search  
Never thinking you are there to find.  
The songs are of the quest, not the prize,  
You are long forgotten in their minds._

Of the Wives:

Forgotten, long before they disappeared, their loss made them visible again. The Ents are at last consumed by the wives they never knew.  
An act of revenge thoroughly completed. There is equality in this genocide. All will die and the race will end.  
The wives chose death for their freedom. They wandered further and further so they would not know the way back; so not one wife could weaken.  
They took only the girl children.  
One boy was born on the journey. He was planted, and watered, and left.  
All the wives wept for their wasted wombs. His mother wailed and tore at her heart. The madness of her grief and the fury of her guilt led her to the water’s edge. She waded in until the waves lapped heavily above her head. Salt water made her eyes raw, the bitterness a salve to her soul.  
The wives, watching at the shore, held hands and sang lullabies their mothers knew. Sorrow for the price of freedom swelled their voices and the swell itself was exhilarating.  
Continuing the song was everything as they wandered. They sang what they saw, did, found, learnt, suffered, loved. They forgot the old words and their language began to change.  
Only the tunes remained the same.  
And should the Ents have wished to find them, they need only to have listened for the ditties they knew as children, hummed by passersby, and followed the music backwards to their wives.  
Women not waiting to be found, but not lost either.  
But the Ents, not knowing their wives, never knew where to start and perhaps never understood the enormity of their loss, knowing only that there was death at the end of their grief.


End file.
